Questions Arise after Woman Dies at Coney Island Hospital

A Brooklyn woman is dead and family member says it’s because of negligence and malpractice at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn.

Grisel Soto, 47, was taken to the hospital on January 31, 2016, after experiencing head pain. Family members say she was unable to speak. When she arrived at the hospital’s emergency room, the triage nurse, whose job it is to make an initial assessment of possible medical problems, suspected that she was having a reaction to synthetic marijuana. Because she was screaming and thrashing on the bed, her hands and legs were restrained and she was injected with a tranquilizer. According to hospital reports, she went into cardiac arrest multiple times during the next 12 hours and died the next morning.

Soto’s husband, Jorge, said that the mistreatment of his wife started when paramedics arrived at their apartment. He says that five EMTs held her down and strapped her to the gurney. When told by the triage nurse that a reaction to synthetic marijuana was suspected, he told them that she was on antibiotics after having flu-like symptoms the week before. Soto insisted that, in more than 20 years of marriage, he’d never seen his wife use illegal drugs.

Sources say that hospital officials acknowledge that Grisel may have had some form of meningitis. The chief medical examiner’s office is conducting an investigation and indicated that, while meningitis may still be a likely cause, they have ruled out any type of contagious meningitis.

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